Da Vincis Art of War

Some years ago there appeared a Risk-like boardgame called
Magnifico. This was set, as might be expected, in Renaissance Europe at the
time that one Leonardo da Vinci was alive. The game allowed the players to
utilise the various, ingenious and remarkable war-machines designed by the
great man in their quest to dominate Europe  so in addition to conventional
troops of the time you had tanks and aircraft. Basically you could
summarise the game as Risk but with reduced emphasis on luck and some basic
resource management elements introduced into the game. Now Slitherine have
brought this game to the iPad, so lets see how it stacks up.

First up, I guess, is that the game is no longer called
Magnifico, which I assume is because Slitherine think that Da Vincis Art of
War sounds more like a wargame, their usual fare, and will thus be found in
the App store amongst the masses of dross that clutter it up. However, despite
the name change the game is, I believe, a full recreation of the original in
electronic format, and as such does seem to be a good candidate for the iPad as
opposed to a desktop  certainly the iPad does appear to be the platform of
choice for boardgame conversions these days.

First impressions are, as we know, important and I have to
say that Da Vincis Art of War really looks good. The graphics are spot on and
the screen is not overly full. A nice touch is that an information board that
pops up at various times can be moved around the screen so it doesnt get in
the way of what you need to see. Obvious, perhaps, but nicely executed. The
designers have not gone in for massive amounts of animation to make the iPad
version seem wholly different from the original boardgame, but the animation
they have implemented is simple and effective and adds to the feel of the game.
Graphics is definitely an area that has worked for this game.

For those who like them (or need them) there is an easy to
follow tutorial which walks you through the game, and there is an option to
have the game prompt you during your move  but youll almost certainly turn
that off pretty quickly if you use it at all. If needs be you can also refer to
the manual built into the game. The game interface may not be conventional, but
is easy to use and logical when you get going.

When you start a new game you get to choose the number of
players and the difficulty level  the latter is done by selecting opponents
who are more or less capable. You also get to choose the game length which is
expressed in terms of the number of points you need to accumulate to win (30,
40 or 50). So between these options you should have a good variety of possible
games and thus replayability. Now the observant will have spotted a potential
issue with the game  all your opponents are AI, there is no multi-player
option. None of any sort, local or online. There may be 10 AI opponents to
choose from, but AI is never the same as playing a real human opponent. Whilst
a lot of people are happy to just play AI opponents this is, in my view, a big,
nay glaring, omission and puts the game on the back foot to some degree.
Hopefully this feature will be added sooner rather than later, it needs to be.
However, it would be unfair to move on to other parts of the game without
noting that although you are stuck just playing the AI, that AI is actually a
set of capable opponents with even the easiest opponents being quite tough to
beat when you start playing the game to begin with  so with 4 grades of them
to work through it isnt as bad as I first thought.

The game play itself is turn based. Each turn starts with an
auction where you bid money (or not if you dont want to) with the winner being
the Magnifico for that turn. This has some important results. The Magnifico
gets first dibs on whichever of Leonardo da Vincis projects are on offer that
turn, with the other auction participants getting to choose in order of next
highest bidder until all the projects on offer are gone. Being the Magnifico
also gains you victory points and means you move first that turn, not that this
is always a good thing. The projects themselves mostly improve your units in
various ways.

After the auction phase each player then makes their moves
again in the order dictated by the auction. This is where you grab territory
and the like. You can make 3 invasions into territories outside of your
control, which is limited by the fact you need some sort of access to them
either by land border or sea route. Territories give you money and troops (the
basic infantry troop type) each turn. At the start each player has but one
territory so initially this is a land grab with no opposition, but as you can
claim up to 3 new territories a turn early on the map fills up quickly and any
further expansion means conflict. In your turn you can also construct
fortifications and build Leonardo inspired units such as tanks, planes, cannon
and the like. These special units need infantrymen to operate and come with
complications that can arise if their attack is unsuccessful  for example the
Great Cannon can cause casualties amongst your own infantrymen.

The game continues until the end of a turn when one of the
players gets enough victory points to win. Points are gained each turn for
winning the auction, controlling more territory and such like.

Conclusion

With the issue about multi-player left to one side Id have
to say that this is a really good boardgame conversion. It looks good and it
plays well. It is surprisingly challenging for an AI only game and looks to
have good replayability. The developers have crammed a lot of character into
the interface and graphics and come up with something that is distinctive. It
deserves to be a great success and at $4.99 is good value. My recommendation is
that if you like Risk style boardgames you should by this now; heck, if you
generally like boardgames or similar just buy it anyway  you wont regret it.